With the proliferation of the use of information communications mechanisms such as, for example, the Internet and digital television (TV), it is desirable to be able to deliver content (e.g. advertisements) to a user of the information communications mechanism that is particularly relevant (i.e. is targeted) to the user. In a typical household there can be multiple users (i.e. persons), using and/or sharing multiple platforms (e.g. personal computers, different browsers, media players, and set-top boxes), which share a single connection (e.g. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), or cable modem) to an information communications mechanism (e.g. Internet Service Provider (ISP) network). Given that most users are reluctant to accept invasive data collecting and reporting elements (e.g. agents) on their computing platforms, differentiation of the users in a single household must be accomplished by observing the aggregate data stream (i.e. data traffic) within the information communications mechanism (e.g. ISP network or digital TV network).
A typical approach to attributing (i.e. associating) portions of the data traffic to each of a plurality users for the purposes of Internet advertising has been through the use of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) cookies (a.k.a. Web cookies). Cookies are parcels of text sent by a server to a Web client (typically a browser) and then sent back unchanged by the client each time it accesses that server.
The use of cookies to associate data traffic with individual users has a number of shortcomings including:                Multiple users can share the same computer, login session, or browser and therefore will share cookies as well;        The same user can use multiple combinations of computers, login sessions and browsers, each with a unique set of cookies and no association between the sets of cookies;        User can delete cookies at any time resulting in the assignment of a new cookie from a given server with no association with any previously deleted cookie from that server; and        In some cases cookies associated only with particular websites have been used resulting in associations that reflect only a subset of the network (e.g. the Internet).        
Accordingly, there is a highly desirable need for improved identification of characters sharing the same access point.